DeWitt and Pat Hardy met at Syracuse University and came to Ogunquit together in 1962. DeWitt had studied watercolor with Ogunquit artist Edward Betts (1920–2008) and quickly became the young gun of the art colony, serving as curator of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art under founder Henry Strater (1896–1987). Hardy had become the grand old man of the Ogunquit art scene and president of the Ogunquit Art Association by the time he collapsed and died following a Barn Gallery opening in July of 2017.
While he was closely associated with the Ogunquit art colony, Hardy actually lived in the Berwicks, where he played first base for the North Berwick Falcons, designed sets for the Hackmatack Playhouse, and, in 1962, cofounded the North Berwick Drawing Group, Maine’s longest-running life-study group.
Hardy’s command of the nude was acquired over decades of observing and drawing the female form, often at the North Berwick sessions. Early on, Hardy experimented with abstraction under the influence of Ed Betts, but he quickly found that he was drawn to realism. Where Betts’s watercolors were very splashy, Hardy’s were clean and crisp.
Hardy captured the bleak, forlorn beauty of the Maine-New Hampshire border country in portraits of old houses and townscapes that spoke of better days. And he painted fruit and flowers, apples and lilies, almost as offerings to the eye, ripeness in a world of decay.
